The Detroit Tigers’ upcoming 10-day, nine-game trip to the West Coast comes at the most fortuitous time, simply because they’ll be able to get away from all the uncertainty of Michigan spring weather.

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And it certainly doesn’t hurt to get the obligatory West Coast trip out of the way now, rather than later in the season, when they’ll already be all traveled out.

“Well, yeah. You gotta play good anywhere, but it’s nice that after this trip, we’re condensing our travel pretty good. We’ll have Florida and (Texas), but we’re out of the way with the West Coast. That’s pretty good,” Tigers manager Leyland said.

“We’re not going out there two, three times. We’re going out there early where hopefully we can dodge some inclement weather here. So, it’s not all bad. Pretty good, really.

“These 10 days out there, we’re done out there. We’ve got Texas, Florida, but that’s not bad. You get into Minnesota, Boston, New York, Chicago, it’s not too bad.”

That’s exactly true. After this one, to Oakland, Seattle and Anaheim, the Tigers’ remaining trips are all so much more manageable.

Only a trio of three-city road trips remain: Tampa Bay/Toronto/Cleveland in late June, early July; Cleveland/New York/Chicago in August; and Boston/Kansas City/Chicago in September.

“We’ve been fortunate the last couple years, the last two, three years to have the long West Coast trip early on,” catcher Alex Avila said. “It’s better than having it later on in the season.”

It should help, too, that the weather can’t be as bad — or at least as uncertain — as it’s been in Detroit for this week’s games against the Blue Jays.

The start of Wednesday’s game was delayed 2:29 by the rain which fell throughout the game, but that was — surprisingly — the only weather-related glitch in the home stand.

That doesn’t mean it was fun to play in, though.

“Miserable,” Avila said.

“That’s one of the worst I’ve been involved in, weather-wise. It was tough,” Leyland said. “And I wasn’t even out on the field. It was pretty rough.”

But there’s less of a chance of having that problem out west.

It might hit the 70s in Oakland, a far cry from the 30s and 40s for games here this week.

“We’re going to be sweating a little bit, but I know it’s going to feel good. I know the Bay Area gets a little chilly at night, but it will be nothing near what we’ve had to deal with,” pitcher Doug Fister said. “And I think having to deal with the things we’ve dealt with so far, being in Minnesota and being here, cold and wet, kind of gives us character, and gives us the knowledge that we can go through it, and rise above it.”

Even better, the Tigers came out of the first home stand over .500, having gone 4-2 against the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays.

“Hopefully we’re past this weather, and we were playing good, despite the conditions, so that’s good,” Prince Fielder said. “We were able to handle ourselves, even in the frozen tundra.”

“Well, I’m not really sure what we’re going to get into out there. I’m not sure,” Leyland said. “But, we won’t have this kind of weather. We might get some rain in Seattle, but they’ve got the dome, so it won’t make any difference.

“The one thing about it is, we should not be sitting around worrying whether we’re going to get the game in or not. We should be able to get in a flow, where we’re playing for 10 straight days, with the exception of that off day Monday.

“So that doesn’t bother me at all. That’ll get guys going. I think the biggest thing is, it gets your rotation going. That’s a big thing, to get them going.”

Quote of the day:

Torii Hunter, on getting hit in the ribs with a Steve Delabar change-up in the seventh inning of Thursday’s game: “I kind of screamed, and it was very embarrassing. It was a change-up, and I screamed before it even hit me. I was like, ‘Ahhhh!’ I have a lot of fun. It hurt a lot in that cold weather. Eight-five miles per hour. I looked at the speedometer, and saw 85 (mph), and I said ‘Be a man! Run down the line, don’t rub it.’ But it hurt.”